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Ask The Expert

I have read countless threads on discussion forums asking for assistance with water quality issues. Considering how many forums are available to hobbyists everywhere, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine that hundreds of queries are posted on a daily basis just in the United States. With the availability of search engines, the information is readily available having been answered time and time again. Why is it so hard to master this particular area of our hobby? Are our personal circumstances so uniquely different from everyone else’s?
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Mangroves are way cool. They are under appreciated and lacking in attention for nearly all circuits of the aquarium hobby. Historically mangroves only made an appearance in the reef hobby as a source of filtration, often growing in sumps as a way to remove nitrogen compounds. Oddly enough as the years have gone by a general consensus has formed believing that mangroves in general are a very poor choice for filtration. They grow slow, and they appear to remove little nutrient from the water, especially when compared to many species of fast growing macro algae.
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Acropora sp. - {a-cro-POH-rah; alternate: a-CROP-o-rah} - a species of calcium-based coral that causes frustration and loss of expendable income but brings joy and exuberance to the more detail-oriented caregivers.

At our club meeting recently, I pointed out how keeping Acropora sp. is often considered the pinnacle of reef keeping. Hobbyists yearn for a full-blown tank that holds these colored sticks that grow into such interesting and unique shapes. The question isn't 'if' you can keep them, but rather 'how long' can you keep them alive to the point of enjoying some thriving colonies. Since they come in blue, green, red, orange, purple, yellow, brown and more, a living Acropora-laden reef can be
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Saving money. This is a difficult topic to breach, and I'm sure I'll offend some people in the process but I've been moved to speak up on this very important subject more than once. Not only to improve how others perceive you, but also for the sake hobbyists everywhere and the hobby itself.
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Reverse osmosis de-ionizing (RO/DI) systems are an affordable piece of equipment for hobbyists everywhere, allowing them to amass and store pure water for their aquariums' needs. A RO/DI system can produce both drinking water and water for our reef tanks, eliminating the need to haul jugs from the local store for daily top-off and for those larger water changes.
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For more than 10 years, I’ve been told that it costs $25 per gallon to set up a saltwater tank, and for that entire duration I've always wondered how ‘they’ came up with that number and if it was even true. Taking into consideration that inflation never ceases and that equipment continues to evolve, it is high time to determine what that cost might be in 2010.
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Over the years, I've kept a number of reef tanks with different lighting, but for the past two years, I've tried something new with something not so new. My reef tank is lit with metal halide (MH) bulbs in Lumenbright pendants, and supplemented with VHO actinic lighting. So far, I'm sure that sounds pretty standard, if not a little pricey. It was totally worth it, as I'm about to explain.
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